Separate credit card accounts and debit card accounts are well known in the art. They include single account balance credit or debit cards that are unusable should the singular account balance or credit limit become depleted or limit is reached, such that these card, methods and systems have many drawbacks. Accordingly, the end user is often embarrassed and stressed when they do not find out that they have exceeded their credit limit until their card is declined in the middle of a purchase, such as rejection of a given point-of-sale transaction, and are further punished by high credit card over-the-limit fees or overdraft fees with debit cards. Thus there is a need to provide alternative solutions to these problems.
Additionally, in recent years, the growth rate of credit card usage has leveled off, while the growth rate of debit card usage has increased dramatically. Intrinsic to a standard debit card is the lack of default risk, whereby once a given transaction is authorized and paid using a debit card, there is no risk that the end user will default on paying the debit card issuer, because payment has already occurred. As a result of this lack of default risk, fee revenues such as interchange fees that card issuers earn on debit cards is less than what card issuers earn on credit card transactions. Given the scenario where credit card usage is leveling off, and debit card usage is rising, financial card issuers will continue having a tougher time sustaining the overall level of revenue growth that they have enjoyed in prior years when the growth rate of credit card usage was still strong.